Confronted By the Past
by Rhonda1
Summary: *Conclusion updated*...Sydney learns just how deeply her mother's betrayal affects her very existence...
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: All characters mentioned in this story belong to J.J. Abrams. Just borrowing for a little drama and angst.

Spoilers: Up to "Masquerade." Everything else is pure fiction.

Summary: Sydney learns some disturbing things about her mother when she finds her hidden journals.

Author's Notes: Okay, so I've been kicking around this storyline for awhile and it all came together after "Masquerade" when we learned Sydney's mother was still alive.   Since Noah doesn't really figure into the plot, let's pretend Sydney never went to Vienna and he never came back into her life.  

Hope you enjoy.

Chapter 1 

Jack Bristow stood by his car as he waited for the plane carrying his daughter to come to a complete stop. Sydney was returning from Italy, the Rambaldi Prophecy no longer hanging over her head. Devlin had alerted the FBI and the DSR about what had transpired and although both agencies were extremely upset by the tactics they had used in order to extract Sydney, everyone involved agreed that Sydney Bristow could no longer be thought of as the woman Rambaldi had described in his Prophecy. For all intents and purposes, the matter had been temporarily shelved.

The door to the plane opened and Sydney came dashing out a few moments later. Jack allowed himself a brief smile. His daughter had never been one to sit still for very long. She had probably been out of her seat the second the plane touched down.

Sydney gave a sigh of relief as soon as she stepped onto solid ground. Italy was always a nice place to visit, but it was good to be home. Especially now that she no longer had to worry about that damned Prophecy.

She saw her father waiting for her and was mildly surprised to see him. For a split second, she had thought maybe Vaughn would be there to pick her up. Then she realized what an idiotic idea that was, considering that they weren't supposed to be seen with each other. Her father was probably the only logical choice.

"Hi, Dad." They stood there facing each other. Their relationship was still too awkward for a welcome-home hug, so they found themselves relegated to brief smiles of hello and a few words of uncomfortable chit-chat.

"Your flight was uneventful?"  
  


"It was fine." She nodded. "Is everything okay here?"

"I'll fill you in while I drive you home." He took her bag and stowed it in the trunk while she got into the passenger side of his car.

During the drive, Jack related to Sydney about everything that had happened between the CIA and the FBI and DSR. She was no longer under investigation, but she still faced the unenviable task of having to talk to Sloane about the missing Page 47 from the Rambaldi book.

"He's absolutely incensed over the fact that the page is missing, so you're going to have to tread carefully." Jack cautioned her.

"When do I have to see him?"

"Well, I figured you might be tired after your trip, so I told him you were feeling a bit under the weather." Jack replied. "Unfortunately, I could only stall him until the day after tomorrow."

"And what's my story supposed to be?"  
  


"You are to tell him that K-Directorate must have switched the pages when they saw that it was blank. They probably needed more time to decode it, but since they knew we were after the book, they placed a dummy page in there just in case we got our hands on it before they were able to decipher Page 47."

"Do you think he'll buy that?"

"He has no reason not to." Jack gave a shrug. "You would have no motive to steal the page because you're not supposed to have any idea that you needed the invisible ink Cole was after in order to decipher it."

"Besides which, Arvin has always had a soft spot where you are concerned." He added.

"Lucky me." Sydney said wryly, in a tone that reflected she felt anything but blessed.

"Don't scoff, Sydney." Jack admonished her. "Arvin's feelings towards you have served you very well in the past. He was very reluctant to believe you were the mole and it no doubt saved you from being prematurely terminated."

Sydney looked sulky. "I just wish he wasn't so intense. It creeps me out sometimes." She confessed. 

A thought struck her. "Is it because of Mom?" She suddenly blurted out.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, they knew each other, right?" Sydney pressed her father. "What was their relationship like? Were they close? Does he see her in me?" Her questions all came out in a rush.

"No, Sydney, I don't believe that's the case." Her father shook his head, but did not elaborate. "You're just the closest thing he has to a child since he and Emily were never able to have any children of their own."

"Thank God for small favors." She muttered, shuddering at the thought of a "Little Arvin" running around.

After a few moments of silence, Jack cleared his throat in an unusually loud manner. "Since we are on the subject of your mother, I've been meaning to talk to you about something."

Sydney gave him an expectant look. "What is it?"

"While you were in Italy, I did something I shouldn't have." Jack said tightly. "I broke into Langley's classified archives."

"Dad!" Sydney looked at him with alarm. "What if you had been caught?"

"Don't worry, I wasn't." He replied a shrug. "And it was imperative for both of us that I find out if your hunch was correct."

"So what did you find out?"

"The file I found confirmed that she did not die in the accident, but the CIA doesn't know what happened to her. They don't know if she went back to Russia or if she's still here in this country." Her father informed her.

"Mom's alive?" Sydney sat there, stunned. After a few moments of digesting this earth-shattering information, a strange kind of peace settled over her. "Dad, I have to find her." She said in a quiet, controlled voice. 

"No, Sydney, I will not allow that!" Jack's fury was unleashed with a roar. "She is not worth the time or the effort it would take to look for her!" He exploded.

"I need to know where she is." She said insistently.

"Sydney, we don't even know if she's still alive!"

"That doesn't matter to me." Sydney said obstinately. "Either way, I have to know."

"Even if you do find her, what do you expect from her?" Jack's voice rose heatedly. "It won't change what she did to us." 

"Dad, please!" 

"Sydney, I'm telling you for this for your own good. You had better know just what you're getting into before you go digging around in something that would be best left buried." His tone was resentful. "Do you think you will have some sort of tearful reunion with her and she will beg for your forgiveness? Do you that will make up for all the lies and the deception and the betrayal?"

Sydney had no response to his questions as it was completely beyond her realm of thinking. First, she had to find her mother. Only then could she worry about how it would affect her life.

"Dad, you've made your objections abundantly clear." Sydney's tone was brisk and to the point. "But nothing you can say will change my mind about this. I _am _going to look for her and I'm not going to stop until I find her."

For the next few minutes, the tension in the car was palpable. Both Bristows were incredibly stubborn individuals, neither willing to give an inch. As the moments passed without a word spoken between them, Jack slowly came to the realization that he had no business as to suggest that Sydney not search for her mother. As her father, he could forbid it, but he knew it would be a gesture in futility. After so many years of absent parenting, he could hardly expect his daughter to give his protests any credence. Time had widened the gap between them and although he knew Sydney respected him and his opinions, he was not the authority figure a father was supposed to be. 

"Sydney." Jack uttered her name quietly. "There's something else."

"What?" She was still feeling a bit antagonistic and it was apparent in her voice.

"I don't know if I'm being a pushover or a fool, but since you are so hell-bent in going through with your search, I don't see how this is going to make any difference." Jack's voice was resigned.

"There are some things of hers that I've kept in a storage locker since she's been gone." Jack said in a stilted voice, as if he was just barely able to speak about her mother. "The rental agreement is going to come up for renewal soon and I've been thinking that it's just a waste of money to keep all of those things in storage for someone who's never--" He stopped in mid-sentence. "What I mean is that if you want some of her things, you can go through the boxes and take what you like. The rest will be sent to charity or it will be burned." His tone was clearly matter-of-fact and dismissive.

_No, her father wasn't still bitter about her mother's betrayal_, Sydney thought to herself with a grimace.

"What kind of things did you keep?"

"Books, clothes, jewelry, a few photo albums."

_So that's where they were_. Sydney had been just a child when her mother "died," so it had never crossed her young mind to put away all the memories that had been captured on film for safekeeping. But then when she got older and she wanted to look back, she was unable to find any of the family photo albums. Apparently, her father found it too painful to have any reminders of her mother around. 

A memory of her mother floated into her brain. "Dad, did you keep any of her clothes?"

"I think there are a few things." Jack said stoically. "I didn't pack her things—I had the nanny do it—but I believe we gave most of it to charity. It was impractical to keep her clothing since it's not the sort of thing that ages well. It was twenty years ago and of course the styles have changed since then."

"Do you think you kept might have kept that black silk shawl with the fringe?"

Jack looked surprised. "You mean the one I brought back for her from Spain?" He inquired.

She nodded. "Mom loved that shawl. She said it made her feel glamorous and mysterious."

Sydney smiled. "I remember I was playing dress-up one day. It was raining. You were on one of your trips and it was just the two of us at home. We were pretending we were gypsies."

"She lent me all of her bangle bracelets and these really funky gold clip-on earrings with tiny little beads. I was wearing a white peasant blouse and one of her skirts that dragged along the floor when I walked." Sydney's eyes took on a faraway look as she reminisced. "Mom tied a scarf around my head and she gave me that shawl to wear around my shoulders. Then she put some blush on my face and let me paint my lips with this really bright shade of red lipstick." Sydney laughed at the memory. "Did you ever see the pictures she took of me that day? I probably looked frightful but I felt beautiful that day."

Jack had a peculiar look in his eyes. "No, I don't think I ever saw those photos." He said stiffly.

Sydney caught her father's rigid posture and the way the knuckles stood out on his hands as he gripped the steering wheel too tightly. She gave him a troubled look. Maybe he didn't want to hear about the happy times she had shared with her mother. Maybe it made her betrayal hurt all the more.

"So do you have a key you can give me for the locker?" She asked quietly, realizing she had better tiptoe around the subject of her mother.

"Yes." He removed an envelope from his pocket. "I've also written down the directions to the storage facility."

"Thank you."

_To be continued_…


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

In spite of the fact that she was suffering from major jet lag, later on that day, Sydney drove over to the storage locker to retrieve her mother's things. She was surprised at how little there was. When she had been packing to make the move to her new apartment, she had filled boxes upon boxes with all of her stuff. Her mother had been in the U.S. for almost ten years yet she had accumulated very few possessions. It was rather sad to see how the remnants of her mother's life could be so easily stowed in the back of her SUV with room to spare.

Francie was out working when Sydney arrived back home, which was just as well. She would have offered to help with the unpacking, which was a kind gesture, but it was a task Sydney actually preferred to do by herself. Seeing her mother's cherished string of pearls or her well-worn copy of her favorite novel, _Pride and Prejudice _again might cause her to start blubbering and she'd just as soon do that in private.

She carried the six boxes to her bedroom, one by one. When she was through, she sat down on the bed and stared at them, a little apprehensive about what she would find when she opened them. Did she really want to do this?

Sydney's feelings towards her mother were still in turmoil. After finding out about Laura's involvement with the KGB and her subsequent role in Vaughn's father's death, Sydney had felt sickened. When her father told her that they had just been a cover for her mother's covert activities, she had felt betrayed. The mother she had adored and worshipped had used her child's love as a weapon. She had used it to protect herself from being discovered for whom she really was. That knowledge made Sydney's heart ache. Had she been so unlovable that her mother hadn't been able to summon up any feelings for the child she had carried in her womb for nine months? Sydney didn't see how any woman could fail to form a connection to the life that she alone had sustained and nurtured. Had her mother been made of stone?

Before that horrible day in the CIA conference room, she never would have questioned her mother's love for her. Laura had been the kind of mother about whom every kid dreamed. She baked cookies when asked and played games on request. She taught Sydney how to read at a young age, instilling her with a love for books that remained to this day. Laura would always be waiting for Sydney at the bus stop when she got home from school and she would always tuck her into bed at night. Sydney remembered how her mother always loved to be "room mother" at school and how proud she was when all the kids would say how pretty and nice her mother was. With her father not being around much, Laura had always been there for her to make every day special.

That was why it was so hard to believe that every moment she had spent with her mother had been a lie. 

Unable to stand it any longer, Sydney got up off the bed and slit the tape on each of the boxes with a utility knife. Then she sat down on the floor and pulled up the cardboard flaps on the first box.

Her father obviously hadn't kept everything. There were hardly any clothes to speak of, but there were a few mementos she recognized. She gave a delighted squeal when she found the black silk shawl. Then there was a yellow chiffon scarf that Sydney remembered her mother using to tie back her hair on windy days. Also included was a simple white dress. It was sleeveless and above the knee and she knew she'd seen it before. She tore into another box, looking for the photo albums her father said were there. She found them in the third box--six volumes, square and black with a gold outline on the cover.

The photograph she had been looking for was on the very first page. It was of her mother and father on their wedding day. Jack looked oh-so-young in his dark suit and his wavy dark hair combed neatly into place. Laura was smiling, dark and pretty in the simple white dress. A lump rose in Sydney's throat. They had looked so happy; why did it all have to fall apart?

Sydney spent the next few hours going through each of the boxes. Everything she touched brought back some sort of memory about her mother. She found her mother's ornately carved wooden jewelry box, which still held all of her rings and brooches and bracelets. The sterling silver hair clips that she had used to hold back her long dark hair. A dog-eared copy of _Pride and Prejudice_, its pages curled and yellowed due to age and moisture. A Mother's Day card a five-year-old Sydney had made in school.

She was in the process of unpacking all of her mother's books and had removed everything except one very large book with a green cover. The title read _World Encyclopedia_. When she lifted it out of the box, she noticed right away how light it was. For a book that size, it should have had more heft to it. 

Curious, Sydney slid her fingers between the pages to see what was so special about this book that a literature professor would keep it among her possessions. To her surprise, the "pages" were blank and the middle of the book had been hollowed out. She gave a little gasp as she spied the stack of leather-bound journals that fit neatly into the space where the pages should have been. Eagerly, she grabbed the book on top and was disappointed to find out that it had been written all in Russian. 

_It would have to be in Russian_, Sydney thought grimly. Her Russian was weak and it would take her forever to try to translate the text on her own. That being said, she knew she would do it even if it took days. These were her mother's innermost thoughts, put down on paper. And since she wasn't around to be asked, this was the closest thing she had to finding out why her mother had done the things she had done.

Just then, Sydney remembered the comprehensive language translator program that Marshall had recently given her ("You know, for those times when you don't want to muddle through all that pesky foreign language stuff.") If she remembered correctly, all she had to do was scan the pages into her computer and the program would translate the words into English. 

Sydney picked up the first journal and quickly booted up her computer. After loading the program, she turned on her scanner and scanned a few pages into the computer. Things started to hum and whir and several minutes later, her printer started spitting out pages from her mother's diary. Sydney grabbed the first page as soon as it was finished. 

_Why did they give me someone so impossibly hard to break? It is probably Oleg's twisted way of getting back at me_._ He never liked the fact that I was a highly decorated female agent for the KGB_._ He didn't believe it was "women's work_._" That is why he is always asking me to do the impossible, just to watch me fail_._ So far, I have managed to outwit him, but I suppose it was inevitable that my luck would run out sometime_._ Jack Bristow is probably the toughest challenge I have ever faced_.

_It isn't that he is a bad person_._ I know there is a part of him that is brutal and ruthless_._ He breaks rules if they do not suit him_._ But I also know he is fiercely protective_._ I believe he would defend those he loved with his life_.

Her mother had only dated her entries with the month and day, so Sydney had no way of knowing in what order things had happened. This entry sounded as if it had been early in the marriage. She knew her parents had had somewhat of a whirlwind courtship and they probably hadn't know each other as well as they should have when they got married.

Without hesitation, Sydney began the laborious process of scanning her mother's journals into her computer. It was already late, but she knew she wouldn't be able to rest, knowing that the answers to some of her mother's secrets were within her grasp, just waiting to be deciphered.

Two hours later, she had already accumulated a healthy stack of reading material—not to mention having to reload her printer twice because it ran out of paper—when she came upon a blank page. She thumbed through the rest of the book and found that a third of the journal remained untouched, its cream-colored pages smooth and bare. Inexplicably, a shiver went down her spine. Obviously, her mother's disappearance had precluded any further entries into her journal.

The last few pages were just coming out of the printer. While she waited, she wrapped the black fringed shawl around her shoulders, almost feeling as if she were in her mother's arms.

The printer signaled that it was finished printing. Sydney picked up the sheaf of papers and settled into her overstuffed armchair. She pulled an afghan over her legs and began to read. She found herself skipping around, her craving for certain information more important than going in chronological order.

_I think I am being followed_._ The feeling has been nagging at me for some weeks now, but I have been unable to put the words onto paper for fear it would make them true_._ But then something happened today that terrified me_._ I think they were following me when I had Sydney in the car with me_.

_It must be Oleg_._ He is doing this because I told him of my desire to leave the KGB_.

"What the--" Sydney uttered softly. _Mom had wanted to leave_?

He was not happy when I told him what I wanted to do. He said it was out of the question. "You are a government agent. We have put too much time and effort into your training to let you go because you have some silly romantic fantasy of how you want your life to be. Your life does not belong to you." Oleg said to me in his snide little way. "It belongs to the Soviet Union."

Sydney felt a chill even though she was warm under her blanket. How many times had she thought the same thing about her own life? Change a few initials around ("SD-6" for "KGB") and that was her situation in a nutshell. She was disturbed at how closely her mother's life paralleled her own. It made her wonder if she would also suffer the same sort of fate.

When he said that to me, I began to see how hopeless it was. Still, I tried. I humiliated myself in Oleg's eyes by begging and pleading for him to let me go so that I could stay with Jack and Sydney. He sneered at me, disgraced at the level to which I had fallen. "This is why women should not be allowed to become agents. They get too emotional, too attached." That was always Oleg's problem with me. He thought I was doing a job better suited for a man. Maybe he was right. 

_She wanted to stay_? Sydney thought incredulously. The meaning of those words hit her like a ton of bricks. _If she wanted to stay, that meant she loved us_.

_My first priority is to make sure that no harm will come to Sydney_. _They must never be allowed to come near her_. _If only I could tell Jack everything_. _If he knew, he would keep her safe_.

_But I know I cannot_. _It chills me to the bone when I think of his eyes turning cold when he looks at me, his jaw tight and his fists clenched_. _I know he would hate me forever and then he would leave and take Sydney with him_. _My heart would break if that happened, so I know my fate is to suffer in silence_._ Otherwise I would be left with nothing_.

Sydney felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for her mother. She had had no one she could confide in. The only person who knew the truth about her was that hateful Oleg person, who hardly seemed sympathetic to her plight. Sydney couldn't imagine what it had been like for her mother to keep all of those secrets bottled up inside. She could never have done that. She thought about all the times she had ranted to Vaughn about Sloane and her father and that sleazy guy in Greece who had _licked _her face. Just knowing that she had someone on her side, who was always willing to listen to her, made her appreciate all the more that she had someone like Vaughn in her life. 

With some trepidation, Sydney moved forward to the last few entries.

Oleg is telling me that I must start to think about leaving. He thinks Jack is becoming suspicious because I have been unable to gather any useful information in the last few weeks. What he doesn't know is that Jack has been no more cautious than he was before. I have had numerous opportunities to pilfer information from Jack's files, but I do not. If Oleg is unwilling to help me, why should I help him?

Go, Mom! Sydney couldn't help but cheer the fact that her mother had developed some backbone. And she racked up extra points in her eyes for not selling out her dad in the process.

_I do not like taking advantage of Jack's trust_._ He was so hesitant in the beginning_._ Whenever I would ask him about his work, he would always withdraw from me_._ Thank heavens for my precious Sydney_._ She was the reason I was finally able to break through with Jack_._ She was also the reason we became a family_.

Sydney felt the dampness on her cheeks before she realized she was actually crying. Damn it, why was her mother taking her on this roller coaster ride of emotions? Everything had been so black and white before. Her mother had been an enemy agent who had killed a number of agents from the CIA, the agency to which Sydney was supposed to be loyal. Add to the fact that Laura had also been the person who had murdered Vaughn's _father_. Sydney closed her eyes. Out of everything she ever knew about her mother, that one act would always haunt her.

But now Sydney was finding herself with a new perspective about her mother. She still couldn't reconcile with the fact that Laura Bristow had been a loving mother and wife by day and a cold-blooded KGB assassin by night. Normal people just didn't do those things! 

However, there was a small part of her that was gaining some understanding about what her mother had gone through. Everyone had been pulling on her in all different directions. Oleg, Jack, even Sydney herself. Laura had found herself questioning her allegiance to an agency to which she had signed over her life simply because she had made the unforgivable mistake of falling in love with her husband and her daughter. Sydney felt an overwhelming sadness and pity for her mother, two emotions she thought she would never feel for the woman who had only given birth to her because it had been part of a master plan.

_Now I am not so sure it is Oleg who is having me followed_. _For some reason, that frightens me so much more_.

Those were her mother's last written words. It was dated five days before she supposedly died in the accident.

  __

Sydney felt her eyelids drooping as some of the pages in her hand fell to the floor. The long plane flight from Italy and the day's events were finally catching up to her. Right before she fell asleep, her eyes drifted across a name on the page before her. A name she recognized.

_William C_._ Vaughn_.

_To be continued_…


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 

Sydney woke up the next morning with a crick in her neck from sleeping in her armchair. She yawned and stretched and then looked at the alarm clock. _10_:_17_. She gave a silent thanks to her father that he'd bought her more time before her fateful meeting with Sloane.

Some of the pages she had printed from her mother's journal had fallen to the floor during the night. Sydney slid off the chair onto the floor to pick up the scattered sheets of paper. It was then that she saw the name again. _William C_. _Vaughn_. Her heart nearly stopped. How was it possible her mother had known the name of Vaughn's father?

Frantically, Sydney tried to put the pages back in order. If her mother had written about murdering Vaughn's father…it would just squash any goodwill she'd felt towards her from the night before.

_I do not know why I am committing these thoughts to paper_._ Perhaps it is to force myself to finally face up to the consequences of my actions_._ Before that terrible night, I never gave a second thought to what I was doing with my life_._ The people I had maimed or killed were unimportant to me_._ They were not flesh-and-blood human beings; they were simply obstacles to what I needed to do in order to be of service to my country_._ But now I realize that was just my excuse for rationalizing the fact that I was—plain and simply—a killer_.

_It was the last one who made me realize what I was_._ He stared right at me, his eyes never wavered from my gaze_._ Seconds passed, but they seemed like hours_._ I looked at his face_._ His eyes were a pure green, like pieces of polished jade_._ The nose was slightly crooked as if it had been broken when he was a kid_._ His hands were large_._ Maybe he had played football in high school, which would account for the broken nose_._ I saw the gold band on his left hand_._ He was married_._ Maybe he even had children_._ Try as I might, I couldn't help but picture a little boy with a straight nose and green eyes_._ Or maybe he had a dark-haired, brown-eyed girl like my Sydney_._ I tried to imagine what I would feel like if I knew I would never get to see Sydney again_._ How could I deprive a man of never getting to see his children grow up_?_ How could I rob an innocent child of his father_?

_For the first time, my resolve faltered_._ Why was I doing this to myself_? _Why was I humanizing him into a person and not my victim_? _What was happening to me_?

_I didn't realize I had pulled the trigger until he crumpled to the ground_._ Tears sprang to my eyes but they did not fall as the gun dropped from my hand_._ Tentatively, I stepped towards the fallen figure, trying not to think about the fact that he had been a living, breathing human being just moments before_._ I felt for his pulse_._ There was nothing_.

_I suddenly felt an overwhelming need to find out who he was_._ All of the others…they had remained anonymous, which was how I wanted it_._ That way I could pretend they hadn't been real people who didn't have lives of their own and loved ones waiting for them to come home_. _But this one was different and I had to know why_.

_I reached out and searched his jacket_._ His ID was in his inside pocket_._ I flipped it open_.William C. Vaughn._ There was an official seal and the words "United States of America_._" He had been CIA_._ Like Jack, my husband_._ I tried not to think about Mr_. _Vaughn's wife_._ How she would react when she found out her husband was dead_._ It hit too close to home_._ I knew I would go crazy if I ever saw one of those overly solicitous agents standing on my doorstep, waiting to shatter my world_.

_I ran my fingers inside his wallet_._ There was a photograph_._ My breathing shallow and ragged, I forced myself to look at it_._ It was a picture of a woman and a young boy_._ She was young_ _and blonde and pretty_._ Her features looked vaguely European_._ She was smiling as she hugged the grinning child, who looked to be about six years old_._ His sandy blonde hair stood straight up on his head and there was a big gap in his mouth where his front tooth should have been_._ A lump rose in my throat as I pictured that adorable little boy with tears running down his cheeks because his father was dead_._ It made me think of Sydney again and how I would never want to wish any of the pain and suffering that that little boy would soon be experiencing on her_._ I touched my finger to his face as if I could wipe the tears away_.

_I stared at them until I could stand it no longer_._ Just so that I wouldn't have to look at their happy faces, I turned the photograph over_._ What I saw there made me feel even worse_.

Always keep us close in your heart_, the words were written in a flowing, feminine script_._ In the bottom right hand corner was a small notation_. "Michael – 6 years old – 1974."

_I let out a great wail and the floodgates opened_._ I curled up into a tight ball and just rocked back and forth, sobbing and whispering, "I'm sorry, Michael_."

The tears were rolling down her cheeks when Sydney finished reading. She was crying for Vaughn and his parents and those last few tortured minutes of William Vaughn's life. No one should ever have to experience the kind of heartache her mother had rendered upon those innocent people.

It was somewhat gratifying for Sydney to know that her mother had felt remorse for murdering Vaughn's father. It showed Sydney her mother hadn't been a cold-blooded killing machine, that she had suffered guilt at the taking of a human life, if only for that last time. But finding out how anguished her mother had been did not make her forget what she had done and it did not make her forgive. 

Her insides were churning, the conflicting emotions she was feeling making her sick to her stomach. She knew it was wrong to have these feelings of hatred towards her mother—this woman who supposedly sacrificed herself in order to keep her daughter out of harm's way—but she couldn't help it. Vaughn's father hadn't been murdered by just any assassin; he had been murdered by _her mother_ and that made her feel so much worse. She was bearing the guilt from her mother's deplorable acts and she knew those feelings would never go away.

Maybe it would have been easier if she had never known Vaughn. Sydney could have convinced herself that the man her mother had killed wasn't someone anyone missed. That he was just one of the nameless, faceless thousands who had died while serving his country.

But she knew. Sydney knew what that man's death meant to a person she cared about and was close to and if her mother was responsible for Vaughn's pain, then she couldn't absolve her.

_To be continued_…


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4 

After reading her mother's entry regarding Vaughn's father, Sydney couldn't bring herself to look at the journals anymore. She hid the stacks of paper in her closet and then got out of the house for the rest of the day. She got her hair cut, bought a birthday gift for Dixon, shopped for dinner. When she arrived back home, she found Francie and Will there and the three of them spent the evening together, cooking and laughing and just having fun. By the time she fell into bed that night, she was able to say to herself she hadn't thought of her mother once in the last few hours.

The next morning came too quickly. When Sydney awoke, she groaned at the thought of her early class and stuck her head under her pillow when she realized she also had to deal with Sloane that day. She had a feeling things would just get worse from there.

As Sydney delved into her closet for her blue blazer, she spotted the box containing the pages of her mother's journal. She felt a bit guilty about stuffing her mother into the back of her closet, so she pulled out a small stack to read later on when she had time. Maybe it would be of a happier time, although Sydney realized a bit sadly that not much of her mother's life had been joyful.

*     *     *     *

Later on that morning, a call was made to Sydney's home. "Hello?" Francie picked up the phone.

"Joey's Pizza?"

Francie sighed audibly. "Wrong number." She said crossly and hung up.

*     *     *     *

Michael Vaughn pulled up to the warehouse and was surprised to see Sydney's car already in the parking lot. They had just called her home ten minutes ago. There was no way she could haven shaken her tail and gotten here so quickly.

An anxious Vaughn wrenched open the door to the warehouse and made his way quickly to their usual meeting place. His heart dropped into his stomach when he saw Sydney sitting on the floor, curled into a tight ball, her arms wrapped around her knees. He noticed several crumpled pieces of paper scattered on the ground next to her.

"Sydney?" He pulled open the chain link fencing and rushed over to her. Even though the warehouse was unusually warm, she was shivering. He began to pull off his jacket. "Did you get the message we called? How did you get here so quickly?" He settled his jacket around her trembling body.

She looked up at the sound of his voice, but she gave no sign she had comprehended what he was saying.

"Syd?" His brow furrowed with concern. "What's happened to you?" Vaughn was alarmed when he saw the dead look in her eyes. They were normally so sharp and quick and intelligent. A cold hand grabbed at his heart and he felt frightened for the first time in a long time.

"Sydney, please, look at me!" He grabbed her by the shoulders. She seemed to snap out of her daze long enough to recognize him.

"Vaughn?" She croaked out.

"Thank God." He breathed a sigh of relief. "Sydney, are you hurt? Did somebody do something to you?"

"What haven't they done?" She said forlornly.

"Syd, you have to talk to me so I know what's going on." He said gently but firmly. "Who is 'they?'"

"My…parents." She replied in an odd voice.

"Is this about your father? Is he responsible for your condition?" Vaughn asked tightly. If Jack Bristow had done anything to hurt Sydney…well, he didn't care how tough and menacing Jack was. He would take Jack on with his bare fists if he had to.

Sydney let out a short laugh, which sounded bitter rather than amused. "If you only knew how difficult that question is for me to answer."

"I don't know what you mean, Sydney."

She shoved the papers at him. "Read it." She barked.

"What is it?" He took the wrinkled sheets from her.

"Pages from my mother's journal."

Vaughn looked up in surprise. "Your mother kept a journal? Why doesn't the CIA know about this? Sydney, this could be helpful in finding out what happened to her."

Sydney's threw a pair of furious eyes on him. "You know, not everything in my life is fodder for the CIA! Can't I keep anything about my mother just for myself or do they have to analyze her, too, just like they did to me?" She was dangerously close to becoming hysterical.

Vaughn looked a little taken aback by her outburst. "Sydney, that wasn't us." He said mildly. "That was the FBI."

She closed her eyes and heaved a sigh. "I know." He found himself staring into her baby browns again. "I'm sorry. I'm just so rattled I don't know what I'm saying."

"Why don't you tell me how you found the journals?" Vaughn suggested in a calm voice.

"My…father had some of her things in storage and he let me have them. There was a large book with a hollowed-out middle. The diaries were hidden inside." Sydney felt herself slowly returning to normal. "They're written in Russian, so I was scanning the pages into my computer and running them through a translator program."

"Was there anything—did she write about my father?" Vaughn asked, his voice cracking.

She would not tell him what her mother had written. It would only hurt him more and she couldn't bear that. He had already suffered so much at the hands of her mother. She would not add to his pain. Maybe it was for selfish reasons, but if she told him what she knew, he would fall apart and she needed him to be strong and solid right now.

"I haven't found anything yet." _Forgive me, Vaughn_. _I know I've never lied to you before, but I hope you'll understand why I'm doing it now_.

Vaughn nodded resignedly. He turned his gaze to the piece of paper he held in his hands. He read silently. She watched his eyes widen as he realized the meaning of the words that were printed on the page. He looked up at her, a mixture of pity and horror and shock in his eyes.

"Sydney…" He uttered her name, unable to say anything more.

"Vaughn?" Her face crumpled and her eyes filled with tears. "My father might not be my father!"

_To be continued_…


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5 

"I don't know what to say, Syd." Vaughn said quietly. He had managed to get her up off the cold cement floor and they were now sitting side by side on a crate.

"What is there to say?" Sydney said tonelessly. "My mother had an affair and now there's a chance that the man I hate most in this world is my father." Her voice grew bitter.

Vaughn wished there was something he could do to comfort her, but he was drawing a blank. He wasn't exactly up on the etiquette of what to do when someone tells you her father may be Arvin Sloane.

"You know, maybe that Rambaldi Prophecy is true, after all." She quipped recklessly.

"Sydney!" Vaughn looked pained. "After everything we did to get you to Italy, you know for a fact that he wasn't talking about you."

"Oh, really?" Sydney flung back at him. "If that man's blood is running through my veins, don't you think I'm capable of worldwide mass destruction?"

"Vaughn, she had an affair with him!" She jumped off the crate and started pacing. "Oh, God, what if my—I don't know even what to call him anymore."

"Sydney, until you know otherwise, Jack is your father and you have every right to call him that." He said gently.

Sydney suddenly stopped in mid-stride and turned to face him. "You know, when I was a kid and he was never around, I used to wish he wasn't my father." She confessed in a quavery voice that broke Vaughn's heart. "I would pretend that one day my real father would find me and take me away from that lonely existence. _He_ would spend time with me and have dinner with me and teach me how to drive and disapprove of my boyfriends."

"You know, I never thought I would be defending Jack, but I think he did the best he could do for you under the circumstances." Vaughn looked at Sydney in her tough-girl stance and wanted so much to fold her into his arms. "What did he know about raising a little girl?"

"I never realized it until now but I guess I should be grateful he didn't send me away to live with my Aunt Rachel after my mother left." Sydney perked up a bit. "He still wanted me in his life even though it meant he couldn't be a big part of mine."

"Jack loves you, Sydney. He might not be the most demonstrative man in the world but when you need him, he is always in your corner." Vaughn looked thoughtful. "He tried to help you and Danny leave the country when he found out Sloane put out a hit on him. He sacrificed himself to Cole so that you wouldn't get caught in the takedown. He even broke you out of an FBI holding station with a little help from his two able-bodied assistants." Vaughn was gratified when Sydney gave him a brief smile. "Can you honestly say Sloane would have done any of those things for you?"

"No." She admitted. "I know he wouldn't. I never thought of my father as particularly self-sacrificing, but compared to Sloane, he's practically Mother Teresa." She said facetiously.

Vaughn's face broke out into a grin. This was the Sydney he knew and…well, never mind.

A frown appeared on Sydney's face. "I wonder if it ever crossed his mind that I could be his daughter. When he found out my mother was pregnant, he had to have done the math."

"You know, I've always felt this weird creepy vibe from him." She confided. "He's always telling me how he thinks of me as the daughter he never had." A horrifying thought struck her. "Do you think that's why he recruited me? To get me into the 'family business?'"

"Sydney, don't give him that much credit." Vaughn advised her. "Didn't you tell me once that Jack hated the fact that you were working for SD-6 and that he would've told you the truth about them if he could have? That's the way a real father would react."

"I suppose so." She nodded slowly.

"And Syd, you only have to think about Danny to figure out that Sloane couldn't possibly be your father." Vaughn added, a bit hesitant to bring up the subject. "A man doesn't have his daughter's fiancé killed, no matter how twisted he is."

Sydney gazed at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "Do you know how much I want to believe you right now?"

Vaughn smiled. "Then do it. That's an order." He said, mock sternly.

She let out an involuntary laugh. "You know, for years, my father was not a major part of my life. He missed ballet recitals and school plays and even my high school graduation. I told myself I was okay with it and that it didn't matter because we were never really close, anyway."

"But now, just when we are starting to reconnect and there's a chance I might lose him again, I want so much to hold on to him." Sydney met Vaughn's gaze. 

"Sydney, you have to talk to him."

"I know." She said in a small voice. "I'm just afraid of what he might tell me."

"I've never known you to be afraid, Sydney."

She shook her head. "Finding out my whole life has been a lie scares me to death."

"Sydney, your life isn't a lie." Vaughn closed the gap between them, forcing her to look at him. "Jack might not have always been around for you, but he was the person you looked up to, not Sloane. He was the one you wanted the attention from. He was the one who you wanted to make proud."

"Even if Jack isn't your father, it doesn't change who you are. Our parents influence who we become but they don't dictate it. We are who we are because of the decisions we have made for ourselves. Neither Jack nor Sloane has nothing to do with the person you've turned out to be."

Sydney gave him a grateful smile. "I pray to God you're right."

_To be continued_…


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6 

After leaving Vaughn, Sydney headed to Credit Dauphine for her meeting with Sloane. As she stepped into the secret inner sanctum, she ran into Jack. He gave her a brief smile.

"Dad, I really need to talk to you." Sydney said to him in a low voice.

He nodded. "All right, I have some free time later on today."

"Privately, Dad."

Jack caught the no-nonsense tone in her voice. "Of course. Maybe where we met with your friend the other day?"

Sydney immediately caught on that he was speaking about the warehouse. "That sounds good."

"Sydney!" Jack and Sydney looked at each other. It was Sloane. Jack gave her a meaningful look and then moved on.

Sydney closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. After what she had just learned about him, she so did not want to deal with him today.

However, Sydney knew what was expected of her, so she complied. She whirled around, a big fake smile on her face. "Hello." She said sweetly.

Sloane returned her smile with a shark-like one of his own. "Sydney, how are you feeling? Jack mentioned you were ill."

"I think it was just one of those 24-hour viruses." Sydney said pleasantly. The last thing she wanted to do was make small talk, but again, she knew how she had to play the game. "How's Emily doing?"

"Better." Sloane looked pleased at her for asking. "I wanted to thank you for all the time you've been spending with her these past few weeks. Your visits have done a world of good for her."

"I'm so glad." Sydney smiled and part of her was being truthful.

"She's so fond of you, you know." He mused. "We both think of you as the daughter we were never lucky enough to have."

Sydney had to physically restrain herself from rolling her eyes. Could he give it a rest already with that whole "I think of you as a daughter." routine? She didn't believe for a second that he was being sincere. Manipulative, controlling, egomaniacal men like Arvin Sloane never wanted to be fathers. They were too wrapped up in their own miserable lives.

"Now I would like to talk to you about the Rambaldi book." Sloane's voice turned steely as he steered her into his office and closed the door.

*     *     *     *

Sydney met up with Jack later on that afternoon at the warehouse. 

"Thanks for meeting me."

"Of course." Jack shook off her gratitude. "How did it go with Sloane?"

"Fine, I guess." She shrugged. "He acted as if he accepted my story."

Jack nodded. "You would still do well not to cause any waves for a little while."

"I know."

"So was that it?"

"No!" Sydney said sharply. Jack raised an eyebrow at her mini-outburst.

"Sorry." She flushed. _Keep cool, Syd_, she instructed herself. _If there is anything this man has taught you, it is how to keep a lid on your emotions_. "I also wanted to talk to you about Mom." She said in a more sedate manner.

A muscle in his jaw clenched. "Is this about your foolish idea to go looking for her?" His tone suggested Sydney was grasping at straws.

"No, but I wish you wouldn't be so condescending about it."

"Sydney, even if you do find her, what do you think that will accomplish?" Jack questioned her. "If your mother is still alive, then she faked her death in order to get away from us. Doesn't that speak volumes to you that we didn't matter to her?" Jack's voice was bitter. He had never gotten over Laura's betrayal. Even after all these years, talking about her still tore at his heart.

"You don't know if that's true." Sydney said stubbornly. "What if they kidnapped her and she's being held against her will?"

"She was a highly successful agent for the KGB. They would hardly treat her as a prisoner." Jack dismissed her theory as if he were flicking a bug from his sleeve.

_They would if they knew she didn't want to be there_. "Dad, I don't want to argue about this with you." She sighed, giving up momentarily. "That isn't why I called you here."

"Well, then what is there to talk about?"

Sydney cleared her throat before she began to speak. "You know, we never really discussed it." She paused. "What you told me that day at CIA Headquarters. You told me that we were just her cover. That she was only using you in order to obtain classified information from the CIA."

Jack could see the pain in his daughter's eyes when she spoke.  No child should find out that her mother never wanted her. Even if it were true (and in Laura's case, he was sure it was), he had to find some way to ease Sydney's heart of the hurt she must have been feeling.

"Sydney, I'm sorry for what I said that day after you found out about your mother." Jack's voice was surprisingly gentle. "I admit I was a little hurt when I realized you suspected me of being a traitor to my country and perhaps I wanted to lash out at you for that."

Sydney's head shot up. "Dad…" She started to protest. But then she didn't know what else to say. It _had_ taken almost no convincing by Vaughn to make her believe that her father was working for the KGB against the United States. What else could she think? He was the one who had been the spy, not her mother. Wasn't it perfectly natural that she would suspect him over her?

Jack held up a hand. "You don't have to apologize. You had no idea about your mother, so what else could you think?" He shrugged. "To you, your mother was a perfect saint. I knew she wasn't anywhere close to that, so maybe I wanted to take her down a little in your eyes. She was always the paragon of virtue whereas I was somewhere much lower on your scale."

A wave of guilt swept over her. She never realized how much her father had been hurt by her perceived indifference to him. If only she had remembered how she had felt when he acted the same way with her! Sydney had always valued her mother's love over her father's simply because her mother was the one who always openly expressed it. Her love was given freely with hugs and kisses and sweet endearments. Jack, on the other hand, had always been the stern, shadowy figure during her childhood; the father who was never home and even when he was, he never had any time for her.

_But who is with you now, Sydney_? Your father was the one who loved you enough to stick by you. Your mother was the one who turned tail and ran.

"…wrong of me to try to tear her down just to build myself up. No matter what she did, she is still your mother."

_But are you still my father_? She wanted to scream.

"I guess the pain and the bitterness I feel towards her is still there even after all this time. It's been over twenty years and sometimes it feels as if it just happened yesterday." Jack's eyes took on a faraway haze tinged with a very tangible bleakness.

Sydney couldn't take it any longer. She had to let him know that he had been wrong about her. "Dad, however things started out with you and Mom, that wasn't how it ended." She blurted out.

Jack gave her a penetrating look. "What do you mean?"

"She cared about us." Her voice was urgent. "She wanted to leave the KGB and be a family, but they wouldn't let her. They were pressuring her to return to Russia."

His eyes narrowed. "How do you know that?'

"Mom kept a series of journals. I found them in one of the boxes you let me take from the storage locker."

"A journal?" Jack repeated. "She wrote about us in these journals?" For the first time, Sydney saw a flicker of hope in her father's eyes and it nearly broke her heart. Despite his hardhearted demeanor, he wanted so much to believe his wife and her mother hadn't been the ruthless, cold-blooded killer he had always thought her to be. That somewhere—deep in her heart—the feelings and thoughts and dreams they had shared together had been real.

"Dad, I know you've always thought that Mom was only using you. That she pretended to love you in order to knock you off your guard." Sydney saw her father stiffen and she winced.

"But I'm telling you now that that wasn't the case." Sydney said earnestly. "Dad, I wanted you to know that she truly loved you. She loved both of us and she wanted to stay."

Jack stood there, perfectly still as he absorbed this information. It was at times like these when Sydney wished her father wasn't always so stoic and in control of his emotions. Just once she would like to see him actually express how he was feeling._ Scream, yell, put your hand through a wall_! _Do anything except stand there with your patented, perfected poker face_!

_But if he actually did any of those things, then he wouldn't be my dad, would he_? Sydney thought wryly. She had fully anticipated this kind of reaction from him and damned if Jack didn't disappoint her. She felt a sort of comfort in that. She knew this man standing before her (as well as anyone could know a man as guarded as Jack Bristow) and she couldn't bear the thought of someone else trying to replace him in her life. Because there was also so much she _didn't_ know about him and she'd never get the chance to find out about any of it if he knew he had no familial connection to her. Jack would disappear from her life as quickly as he had slipped back in.

"I—thank you for telling me this, Sydney." Jack's manner was still as inscrutable as ever—even when he had just received some of the biggest news of his life. The man truly had ice water in his veins. Still, Sydney couldn't fault him. That was just his way and she accepted that.

Now for the hard part. "Dad, was I planned?"

Jack looked up, surprise on his face. "Why would you ask me something like that?"

"Just curious." Sydney said, acting casual. "Don't worry, I'm not going to fall apart if you tell me I was an accident."

Jack was silent for a very long moment. "Your mother and I weren't trying to have a baby when you were conceived." He finally said. "It was just something that happened."

"Did you want children?"

"Of course." Jack said hastily and then worried Sydney would think he had answered too quickly because that was what he was expected to say. "What I mean to say is that I did want children, but not as soon as we had you." He amended.

"You and Mom weren't married for very long before she became pregnant?"

"No." Jack shook his head. "I was moving up quickly with the Agency and I was away a lot. It didn't seem like a good time to start a family when your mother was going to have the primary responsibility of raising the children."

"Were you upset when she told you she was pregnant?"

"I was surprised." Jack admitted. "We had been…careful or so I had thought. But nothing is foolproof."

_So at least there was a chance that he was her father_. "Dad, will you tell me about your marriage?" Sydney asked in a timid voice. "I mean, I know in the beginning, she was just playing a part, but how did _you_ see it? Were you happy?"

"My relationship with your mother was not picture-perfect." Jack was choosing his words carefully. "I am not a man who gives his trust away easily and even though I fell in love with your mother, there was always a part of me that I held back from her. And I don't mean about my job. I'm talking about who I am."

"It was difficult at first. Getting to know a person you hadn't known very long. Our courtship was a blur that ended in marriage, but the day after the wedding, I woke up next to a woman I didn't know very well. And she didn't know me, either."

"So there were trust issues in the beginning. It's always hard knowing if you can open up to a person and trust that they will keep all of your secrets." Sydney empathized with her father. Knowing how secretive he could be, it must have been one of the hardest things he'd ever done; putting his heart into someone else's hands with the blind faith that they would keep it safe for you. 

"But when I found out we were going to have a baby, it was as if a veil had been lifted." Jack was not looking at her, but was staring off into the past. "I could see things more clearly. This woman whom I loved was going to have my child. What closer bond could I ever have with another person?"

"So gradually I began to open myself up to her. Not just about work, of course, but also about me. My hopes and my fears. We talked about our future and where we saw ourselves headed. We also talked about you and how our child would be gifted and brilliant and extraordinary in every way." In one of the only times she could remember, Jack was gazing at her with a fond expression on his face. "And you didn't disappoint us." He said softly.

"So if you're asking if I was happy you came along, Sydney, the answer is yes." Jack snapped back to the present and his demeanor became more formal. "You brought your mother and I closer together and even though I know now that it wasn't real in the beginning, for me, it was, and that made it one of the happiest times in my life."

The lump in her throat grew larger as she tried to hold back the tears. How could she break his heart with the knowledge she was about to share with him?

Sydney swallowed back the catch in her throat. "You said you were away a lot in the beginning of your marriage. Was Mom upset about that?"

"I knew she was lonely. She had her teaching job, of course, but that was only during the day." Jack replied. "Back then, I thought that was part of the reason why she wanted to have a baby. So that she would have someone around when I was away."

"Didn't she have any friends?"

"Not of her own. Don't forget that she was a Russian spy. She hadn't grown up here or gone to school here. She knew no one."

"Since she was having trouble fitting in, I introduced her to my friends, thinking that she would find someone to bond with." Jack looked at her. "You know, your mother was close with Emily Sloane just like you are now. Arvin was still with the Agency back then. Desk job, not field work. I know they frequently had your mother over when I was out of town."

"Did Mom know about Sloane? That he worked for the CIA?" _Please let that be the only reason for the affair_! She wouldn't be able to stand it if there had been any sort of attraction between them.

"She knew about the both of us." Jack confirmed.

Sydney felt a chill come over her bones, thinking about what her mother had written in her diary. Oleg had been pressuring her to start a family with Jack. He told her it would bring them closer together. That Jack would trust her more, become more open. But what if Jack wasn't around as much as he should have been and her mother became desperate? To what lengths would she go to in order to produce a child?

"Did she like him?" Sydney realized she was holding her breath as she asked this question.

"Not particularly." Jack's lips pressed into a smirk. "I remember her saying to me once that she couldn't understand how such a lovely young woman like Emily could marry a man who looked like a beady-eyed snake in the grass."

_Oh, God_. If her mother couldn't stand Sloane, then how in the world could she let him touch her? Had she been so frantic to follow orders that she could overlook Sloane's creepy-crawliness just to get pregnant?

"Of course, your mother never let on that she felt that way." Jack went on. "To his face, your mother was the epitome of sweetness and light around Arvin. Maybe I should have realized then what a good actress she was. I think her most bravura performance was when Emily had to leave town for about a month."

"Emily was out of town for a month?" Sydney's mouth went dry.

"Yes, her mother was sick. Cancer, ironically enough." Jack revealed. "She flew back to Chicago to be with her. During that time, Laura would stop by the Sloanes every few days with hot meals for Arvin. I remember her telling me they even had dinner together some nights."

"Weren't you here at that time?"

"Actually, no." He replied. "I had been sent to Berlin for a six-week training mission." 

Sydney gulped. "Six weeks? You didn't see Mom for six weeks?" Her voice was edging dangerously close to hysteria.

Jack gave her a strange look. "No, I flew back every two weeks to spend the weekend with her. At the end of the six weeks, I came home."

Six nights as opposed to the twenty-five she might have spent with Sloane? Oh, dear God, the odds did not look good.

"Dad, when did all this happen?" Sydney struggled to keep her composure.

Jack looked thoughtful. "It was the summer of '73, I believe. Your mother was teaching summer school that year, so she couldn't come with me to Berlin."

"1973." Sydney repeated. "Since I was born in April of 1974, Mom must have gotten pregnant that summer, right?"

"Now that you mention it, yes, she did." Jack gave her an intent look, as if he were wondering why she was so fixated on the timeline of events. "She told she was pregnant on Labor Day and I remember her being so tickled with her little joke." Jack allowed himself to smile at the memory.

"I get it, Dad." Sydney resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Labor Day. She would be in labor with me. Funny." She said halfheartedly.

Jack gave his daughter a shrewd look. "So are you going to tell me now why you're so interested in the summer of 1973?" He raised an inquiring eyebrow.

"I didn't say--" She started to protest.

"Sydney, did you forget to whom you are speaking?" Jack gave her a gentle rebuke. "Your interrogation technique is good, but it still needs a little work. I could help you with that, by the way." Sydney couldn't believe her father was being almost playful with her.

"Ah, how could I forget I'm trying to outmaneuver the Grandmaster of Information Finagling?" Sydney bantered back. "I heard what you pulled on poor, unsuspecting Haladki." She chided him.

Jack smirked. "That weasel folded like a house of cards within two seconds of my pointing that gun to his head, but then the little bastard had the nerve to turn me in."

"Guess he better not walk down any dark alleys when you're around." She quipped.

Jack's lips curved into a brief smile. "Now back to the original question?"

Sydney quickly sobered. She closed her eyes briefly and then took a deep breath. "In one of Mom's journals, she wrote about trying to become pregnant." She told her father. "The KGB was pressuring her. She wasn't giving them any useful information and they thought it was because you were being too careful around her. You never let anything slip and they thought you needed…a distraction."

"You mean a child." Jack said tightly.

"Mom was getting desperate." Sydney's tone was bleak. "You were gone so much and they weren't giving her a lot of time before they would remove her from her assignment."

Jack's eyes met hers. "She had an affair." He said in a flat voice. It was a statement rather than a question. The look of defeated resignation on her father's face was devastating.

Without warning, tears spilled onto her cheeks. "I'm sorry." She wiped haphazardly at her eyes. "I didn't want to be the one to have to tell you this! I didn't want you to be hurt by her again."

"I guess I should be used to it now where your mother is concerned." Jack said dispassionately. Then it hit him why Sydney was having such a hard time with this news. "But this doesn't just affect me, does it, Sydney?" A muscle in his jaw twitched. "It's a question of paternity, isn't it?"

Sydney looked down, unable to meet his gaze. "Yes." She uttered. "There's a chance…that you're not…my father." She whispered, her voice cracking. Jack's hardened heart began to ache.

"No." He said forcefully. "I will not accept that."

Even through her tears, Sydney was able to experience a modicum of joy. Her father…Jack…whatever she called him…he loved her. In his own strait-laced, tightly wound way, he loved her.

"I know if you could make it true through sheer force of will, you would do it and you don't know how much that means to me." Sydney gave him a small smile. "But for my peace of mind, I have to know the truth."

"You want to take a DNA test?"

"Yes."

"All right." Jack agreed. "We can have a test done in the lab at Agency Headquarters."

She nodded. "They already have a sample of my DNA from when the DSR people were here."

"Fine. I'll let them take a sample of my DNA and have them test it against yours."

"Thank you." She gave him a grateful look and then hesitated before speaking again. "Can I ask you for one more thing?"

"Of course." He looked at her expectantly.

"Don't be mad at me for saying this, but if the results don't come out the way you want them to, please don't alter them just because you think it's what I want." Sydney said imploringly. "My life is already filled with so many lies. For something as important as this, I want to know the truth."

Jack gave her an ironic smile. "You really are your father's daughter if you think I would do that just to suit my own purposes." 

"Don't insult me by trying to convince me you wouldn't do it." She said knowingly.

"Oh, of course I would." Jack admitted freely. "But I know what this means to you, so I'll let it play out however it goes." He said soberly.

"Thanks, Dad." She started to gather her belongings.

"Sydney, do you mind if I ask you for something now?"

She looked up at him. "What is it?"

"Did your mother say in her journal the name of the man with whom she had the affair?"

Her father's voice was strangely neutral as if he were asking her about the weather or what she had eaten for dinner the night before. But she knew better. Beneath the calm, casual veneer was a simmering fury.

"No." Sydney looked her father straight in the eyes. There was something ironic in all this. Sydney Bristow, the Great Believer in Absolute Truth was telling a lie? She knew now where her boundaries lay. She would do anything to protect the people she loved and if that meant cheating, stealing or lying, so be it. Because there was no way she could tell her father the truth about her mother's affair. If Jack knew it had been Sloane, he would kill him.

_To be continued_…


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7 

Sydney was sitting in a private waiting room while her father was having his DNA sample taken by the lab technician. The procedure was kept very hush-hush and the testing was marked as a rush job.

The door cracked open and Sydney looked up to see Vaughn in the doorway. She smiled at him, happy to see a friendly face. _His _friendly face, more specifically.

"Hey, do you mind having some company?" He asked.

"Not at all." She watched him as he closed the door behind him and crossed the room towards her. "How did you know I was here?"

Vaughn gave her a crooked grin. "This is a walking spy factory, you know. There aren't very many secrets if you know where to look."

"I should have known I couldn't keep anything private." She gave a sigh.

"So you talked your dad." He began.

"Yeah," Sydney met his gaze. "It was…intense. He actually opened up to me about their marriage and how tough it was in the beginning."

"Jack Bristow sharing his feelings?" Vaughn raised an eyebrow. "Must be a first."

"It was hard for him." She concurred. "And it really got to me. I know how tight-lipped my father can be, but he saw how important it was for me to know the facts, so he threw caution to the wind and he told me what I wanted to know."

"How did he take it when you told him about the affair?"

Sydney looked sad. "He tried not to show it, but he was devastated. It was as if she were betraying him all over again."

"I bet he wants to kill Sloane right now." Vaughn remarked.

"Oh, Vaughn!" Sydney gasped. "I didn't tell him about Sloane."

"You didn't?"

"I couldn't." She shook her head. "Because you're right when you said he would kill him." She said darkly. "As much as I would like to see that man six feet under, I don't want my father to go to prison for putting him there."

"Vaughn, you're the only one who knows about Sloane." Her eyes met his. "I know I can trust you to keep this a secret between us."

Vaughn gave her a little smile, feeling ridiculously pleased that she trusted him so completely with such a volatile piece of information. "Of course."

He was such a good friend to her. Sydney thought about all the times Vaughn had been there for her, sometimes above and beyond the call of duty. And how had she repaid him? By lying to him about his father. She felt like dirt and she had to make it up to him.

"Vaughn, I have to tell you something." She began.

"What is it?"

"I found something in my mother's journal about your father." She said in a quiet voice.

"You did?" His jaw tensed. "What did she say?"

"You might not want to hear this." Sydney warned.

"Sydney, if it's about my father…"

"She said she was sorry." She blurted out.

"You were right." His eyes grew stormy. "I don't want to hear that."

Sydney grimaced. "I know it's not possible to make up for what she did to you and your mother. It was a horrible, vile act that she committed and I don't expect you to be able to forgive her."

He gave her a thunderous look. "Are you saying you do just because she wrote some flowery prose in her journal simply to ease her guilty conscience?" Vaughn flung at her, feeling hurt that Sydney could dismiss her mother's actions against him and his family so easily.

"I didn't say I forgave her for what she did to you." Sydney said coolly, but she didn't flinch in the face of Vaughn's anger. "She hurt you deeply and even if she is my mother, I will never forgive her for that."

Vaughn gave her a look of surprise and then had the decency to look ashamed for his outburst. "I'm sorry, Sydney. It's just that I thought…" His voice trailed off.

"I know." She said softly.

He gazed at her with those amazing green eyes. _Like pieces of polished jade_. "Why would you take my side over hers?"

"Maybe because you've been there for me countless times and she…hasn't been." Sydney suddenly felt shy. "I meant it when I said I wouldn't forgive her, but that doesn't mean I'm completely without compassion for her."

"You feel sorry for her." He said, almost incredulously. "Why?" He asked, but not in an accusatory way.

"Vaughn, you know what the life of a spy is like. We follow orders. If someone gets in the way of what we've been instructed to do, we are supposed to get rid of him. You've done it, I've done it, our _fathers_ have done it. Just because my mother was on the wrong side, it doesn't mean she didn't have to follow the same set of rules."

"And let's not forget that the people we've killed have all been someone's mother or father or son or daughter." She said soberly. "We can't exactly act all 'holier than thou' simply because we were lucky enough never to meet the people left behind who were most affected by our actions."

"I know this will be of small comfort to you, but from what I read in her journal, your father's death affected my mother profoundly for the rest of her life." Sydney laid a tentative hand on his arm. "After that mission, she had a hard time sleeping and eating and she cried all the time when she was alone. From that point on, she wanted out."

Vaughn's eyes were red, but he wouldn't allow himself to break down. "Did she—say anything about him?" He whispered. "Before she…" He stopped, unable to say the words.

"Yes." Sydney said hastily before he had to say it. "She said he was very brave. He didn't back down from her. He was defiant until the end."

Vaughn looked down, unable to stop that single tear from falling down his face. Sydney ached to reach out to him, but she hesitated. The room was private but it was still inside CIA Headquarters. If anyone were to see them, her actions might be totally misconstrued. If only he didn't remind her so much of that grinning little boy in the photograph at that moment.

"Oh!" She suddenly remembered what she was holding in her purse. She looked around and saw it lying on the chair. She jumped up to grab it and pulled out an envelope.

"Vaughn, I found this hidden away in my mother's journal. I think she kept it as a form of penance to remind her of what she had done." She handed him the envelope.

Vaughn gave her a confused look as he opened the envelope. Inside was a photograph of him and his mother. He turned it over and read his mother's inscription. His mouth trembled, but his voice was steady when he spoke again.

"He took that picture the day my front tooth fell out." Vaughn said to her. "It was taken several years before he died."

"It must have been his favorite."

Vaughn nodded silently. She couldn't hold back any longer. He looked so lost and forlorn. _Protocol be damned_! She put her arms around him and felt a shudder go through him. Moments later, she felt his arms go around her. They stood like that for a few minutes, holding on to each other for dear life.

Their embrace was not borne from passion, he was well aware of that. It was a gesture made solely to comfort and nothing more. For a long time, he had wondered about his father's last moments. Vaughn had always believed his father had fought to the bitter end because he valued his life and his family so highly. In an odd way, it was reassuring to know he had been right. It simply reinforced his unwavering high regard and admiration for the father he had worshipped.

Vaughn stepped back before it became awkward. His eyes were bright but clear. Sydney felt strangely bereft when he withdrew from her, but decided not to question why. That was something to ponder for another day.

"You know, I'm sorry I didn't ask you sooner, but how are you dealing with all the fallout?" His green eyes were full of concern. They were now seated side by side on a pair of hard uncomfortable plastic chairs.

She shot him a wondrous look. "I thought I was supposed to be comforting you. Why are you worrying about me?"

"It's part of my job." He said wryly. "I can't escape it even when you're right in front of me and not halfway around the world doing something incredibly dangerous and life-threatening."

"Hey, I always come back in one piece, don't I?" Sydney said lightly.

"Thank God." Vaughn murmured. "Come on, Syd, talk to me."

"I don't know how I feel." She shrugged. "I had an idea of who she was before I found her journals. The person she was and the things she did made her seem so cut-and-dry evil, I didn't think she could ever redeem herself in my eyes."

"But she is still my mother and I thought reading her journals would make her life a clearer picture for me."  Sydney said quietly. "I don't condone the terrible things she did, but I thought I would gain some insight to what drove her to ruthlessly…kill." She said awkwardly.

"Then when I started reading about how her life was just this mass of anguish and pain and fear, I began to feel sorry for her. I could tell from what she wrote how scared she was for my safety and it got to me." She confessed. "My mother really did love me and my Dad and I almost felt that it was okay for me to start loving her again. That she deserved my love because she loved me back."

"But then I find out about Sloane and she's all of a sudden become a monster again." Sydney gave him a helpless look. "My perfect, idealized mother has fallen from her pedestal once again."

"Oh, Syd," Vaughn took her hand and held it. "I'm sorry."

"It's my own fault for putting her up there."

Vaughn gave her a sympathetic look. "We always want to see our parents as infallible, that they can do no wrong. I guess that's why it hurts so much when we realize they're human just like the rest of us."

She gave him a grateful look. He always knew just what to say to her. It was as if he had a window straight through to her soul.

"So what are your plans now? Are you still going to look for her?" Vaughn asked.

Sydney shook her head. "I don't know." She looked sad. "Right now, I'm at the point where I'm more afraid of finding her than not finding her at all."

He nodded understandingly. "I know it must be hard for you, not knowing how you're supposed to feel."

"I idolized her so much, Vaughn. Everyone would always say how much I looked like her and I was so proud of that." She gave him a sad smile. "Now it scares me how much alike we are. It's as if the past is repeating itself in me."

"Syd, how can you say that?" Vaughn protested. "You are nothing like your mother."

Sydney shook her head at him. "You say that because you don't want to see it but what is it you think I do all day, Vaughn? I lie to the people who are closest to me." She raised an eyebrow at him. "My mother was the consummate liar. See any family resemblance?"

"Sydney, the reasons why you do what you do are very different from your mother's." Vaughn said insistently. "She did what she did for selfish reasons. To take advantage of your father's love and trust as well as your own."

"That isn't what keeps you going. I know keeping secrets is difficult and incredibly taxing on you, but you're doing it to protect the people you care about, not because you want to hurt them. That is why you can't possibly compare yourself to your mother."

"You sugarcoat very nicely, Vaughn, but it doesn't change the fact that a lie is a lie is a lie. Am I so much better than her because my lies are seen as a 'noble' gesture?"

"I believe so, yes." He said seriously. "You have a conscience, Sydney. You know the difference between right and wrong. Your mother probably did too at one time, but what makes you a better person is that when push came to shove, you didn't cave under to the pressure."

"After Danny's death, I know it would have been so easy for you to say 'Screw it' and continue to work for SD-6 knowing what you knew about them." Vaughn caught her gaze and held it. "You're good, Sydney, and when you have confidence in your abilities, that makes you so much more dangerous. I do believe you would have become a legend in the annals of the CIA. We would have busted our asses trying to nab the great Sydney Bristow, Rogue Spy Extraordinaire." He was rewarded with a smile and he returned it with one of his own.

"But you knew that was the wrong thing to do. Your strong moral code wouldn't let you work for the bad guys. That's why you came to me…er, I mean, us. The CIA." He added, all at once flustered.

"You're making me sound noble again!" She chastised him.

"Well, if it happens often enough, maybe you'll start to believe it." He said sternly. "Bottom line is, Syd, comparing you to your mother is a sin." They exchanged meaningful glances.

Just then, the door opened and they quickly dropped each other's hands. Sydney and Vaughn stood up with rather guilty looks on their faces as Jack walked in, rolling his shirtsleeve down his arm as he did so.

"Am I interrupting something?" He inquired, looking vaguely amused. It occurred to him that he'd never had the opportunity to catch Sydney in a clinch with a boy when she was younger. Maybe he should start making up for lost time.

"Hello, Jack." Vaughn said stiffly. "I was checking to see how Sydney was doing."

"Thank you, but I think I can take care of my daughter's needs now." Jack said pleasantly but dismissively.

Sydney shot Vaughn an apologetic look. Clearly, Jack was overcompensating for his standoffish, unfatherly-like behavior in the past and while it touched her, but she wasn't about to let it get out of hand.

"Dad, Vaughn knows everything." She informed her father, her voice light but full of meaning. 

Jack gave her a surprised look, but toned down his heavy-handed demeanor. "It was nice of you to come, Agent Vaughn."

"You're welcome." Vaughn replied. "I have to get going, though." He gave Sydney a quick smile that warmed her heart. "I'll see you soon."

"Thanks for coming, Vaughn." Sydney sat back down in her chair. Jack took the seat Vaughn had previously occupied.

"They said it shouldn't take very long." He commented.

"Good." She nodded, wondering what she would do if she found out this man sitting beside her was not her father. 

Jack cleared his throat. "Sydney, even if the results are not…favorable, I want you to know that it won't change anything between us." It was so hard for him to show his emotions and it just made her love him all the more because he was trying for her sake. "This man—whoever he is—is not in your life, but I am and I intend to stay that way."

Sydney looked sideways at him. "Thank you. I don't want you to go anywhere, either."

Jack gave her a half-smile. "You know, there was a time when I thought you would never say something like that to me."

"We haven't exactly had the perfect father-daughter relationship and maybe we never will." She paused for breath. "But you are the only person who has been a part of my life from the beginning and you have cared enough about me to remain a part of my life when you could have easily cast me aside."

"I will always love you for that." She said the words so softly, Jack had to strain to hear them. But he had and he would take them for what they were worth.

"So why was Agent Vaughn here? You said you told him about your mother's journals?"

"Yes, he was there when I found about Mom and her…affair." Sydney said awkwardly. 

"And you talked to him about it." It was a statement rather than a question.

"I can always count on him to be there for me." She looked grateful.

Jack raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. "It can't be easy for him to hear about your mother being alive." He remarked. "Especially after what she did to his father."

"No, it's not easy." She shook her head. "You know, Mom wrote something about Vaughn's father. About how she felt…after she…m-murdered him." She stumbled over her words, still finding it so hard to believe even when she had written proof.

Jack looked startled. "What did she say?"

"I don't know how many people she killed before Vaughn's father, but for whatever reason, his death was the one that affected her the most." Sydney swallowed the lump in her throat. "She went through his pockets and she found his CIA identification. I think that's when it hit her that one day the same thing could happen to you and she would be the widow receiving your personal effects from another agent."

Jack remained silent, so she went on. "She wanted out after that, Dad, and she never killed another person."

"She hit rock-bottom." Her father stated contemplatively. "I know how a moment like that…can change your whole life."

"It did." Sydney nodded. "It was so life-altering she even kept a reminder of it."

"A reminder?"

"Vaughn's father kept a photograph of his family along with his ID and she took it. It was a picture of Vaughn's mother and him when he was just a little kid." She explained. "She wrote in her journal that it reminded her of me and what she stood to lose if she continued down that path."

"I can empathize with Mr. Vaughn's father about wanting to have a piece of your family with you whenever you're away from them." Jack said quietly. "When you're alone in a foreign country and you don't know if you'll ever see your loved ones again, you want a remembrance of your life back home. To remind you of what's waiting for you at the end of the road." 

Sydney watched with interest as her father brought out his ID badge. "If one of these days, the same thing happens to me, this is what they'll find." He handed her a photograph.

Her eyes immediately welled up. It was a photograph of her and her mother, dressed up as gypsies. The one he said he'd never seen. She was about to dissolve into a puddle of tears when the door suddenly opened. They both bolted out of their chairs. Jack's body language was tense and her heart leapt into her throat. 

"We have your test results." The doctor announced. He handed Jack the chart.

Jack opened the chart to read it and then passed it along to her without a word. Sydney tried to decipher the expression in his eyes, but he was enigmatic to the bitter end.

She stared at the plain manila folder, unable to move a muscle. Her future relationship with the man standing before her rested in her hands. Out of everything she had ever done in her life, she had never been so deathly afraid as she was at that moment.

"Open the chart, Sydney." Jack prompted her, his voice low and moderate. 

Sydney nodded mutely, unable to look at him. She took a deep breath and opened the folder. She read its contents and then looked up at him with tears in her eyes. 

"Oh, Daddy." Her voice was muffled as she sobbed against his shoulder. 

THE END

Author's Note: I know the show is sometimes blatantly obvious about the fact that Sloane has some warped paternal feelings towards Sydney, causing a lot of people to wonder if he could be her father.  I am so against that happening because I think it would diminish Jack's role in Sydney's life and I really like how they are getting to know each other again after many years of estrangement. So, needless to say, I couldn't let them be torn apart in my story. Thanks to all of you who took the time to read and review.


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